[tags]wi-fi, broadband, free, hotspot[/tags]

Do you have spare capacity on your broadband connection or just feeling benevolent?

Then grab yourself pretty much any old PC, stuff two network cards in, make sure it has a bootable CD drive, minimum 128Mb of RAM and then download yourself a copy of Zone CD. Oh and depending on your confidence levels you’ll have a public hotspot up and running within a few hours or so.

I confess I haven’t actually done this myself, but I do know one person who has set this up and is successfully running a public hotspot - as for me, I’m going to try and persuade the local charity I support to try this out so I just may get my chance to play. I’d set one up off the back of my braodband conenction, but I’m on the ragged edge distance wise and only get a 1Mb connection which my kids manage to utilise fairly consistently.

If I do get the opportunity to get this running, then I’ll report back on my use and how easy it was to set up (or not). In the meantime, who can refuse publicity to a free offering such as this?